The Heaven Trilogy (149 page)

Fine by him. The less he paid, the more he made and, judging by the ease of his trips, this route could hardly be safer. Jamal had done his homework. Heck, on more than one occasion he had waved to the Coast Guard while steaming through the bay. They all knew John Boy.

John Boy had been nursing a beer behind the wheel when news of the nuclear blast off Florida's coast reached him. He stared dumbfounded at the tube for half an hour and his beer had gone warm. He had just cut through those waters himself, less than twenty-four hours earlier. If he'd stopped off in Freeport as was his custom, he might be . . . toast. Literally. But Ramón had insisted on making the trip a straight shot this time.

“You see, you can never tell, John Boy,” he muttered to himself at the wheel. “You live and let live, and you die when it's your time.” That's the way he'd always lived his life.

“Holy Moses.” Next you know, some mad man'll be wheeling a bomb up to the Capital. Maybe it was time he thought about moving west.

He glanced at the chart spread out before him. If the weather held, he'd make Curtis Point in four hours, anchor in the bay, and head home. The log with the goods would have to wait this time. He always waited until all eyes were firmly off the ship before unloading that last log—forty-eight hours at least. But now with this Florida thing . . .

“Holy Moses.”

ABDULLAH HAD just stepped from the underground passage, dragging a blindfolded priest, when the mountain began its trembling. Around him the jungle came to life with fleeing creatures and Abdullah crouched low. The escape passage behind the bookcase had been his idea from the beginning, but he'd always imagined using it to flee his own men, or Jamal, not some assassin from the CIA. Either way, he had chosen well in sending Ramón down in the elevator to deal with Casius.

The Caura River's current waited half a mile to the south. He had pushed the button on Yuri's transmitter and if all had gone well, the bomb aboard the
Lumber Lord
had detonated. But had it? He ground his molars, desperate to know this one detail.

Nothing here mattered now. The second bomb would soon detonate and nothing would make him stop it.

Actually, nothing
could
stop him.

Yes, that was right, wasn't it? He had the codes, but he hadn't memorized them. And now they had just gone up in smoke because of the American's own foolishness. So no one could stop the second bomb. Other than Jamal, of course. But Jamal wasn't here to stop it. He had only to make his way out of the jungle now.

He shivered and suppressed the urge to send the second signal, detonate the second bomb, in case the first had failed.

Abdullah closed his eyes. It was the second bomb that would make history— not this little firecracker he'd sent them. The second bomb was now close enough to Washington, D.C., to destroy the CIA. And the Capital. The thought pushed a soft groan through his chest.

He considered shooting the priest and leaving him here—it would be much simpler than taking him. But another thought stopped him. There were others out there, the ones who'd crossed the perimeter sensors. American soldiers. A hostage would be wise. He would kill him downriver, after the Caura joined the Orinoco.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Sunday

AT TEN thousand feet, peering from a military transport's bubble, David Lunow thought metro Miami looked like an octopus with long tentacles of creeping automobiles reaching out from the bloated city. The lines stretched north two hundred miles along five major routes that had hemorrhaged into several hundred smaller escape routes.

Based on reports from the National Guard, the scene on the ground brought new clarity to the meaning of “chaos.” Driven from their homes at the president's urging and by relentless television images of a blackened Daytona Beach, twenty million city dwellers scurried like rats from a rising tide. Honking cars clogged the streets within hours. Bicycles wobbled in and out of stalled vehicles. Some of the more fit jogged. In the end the runners led the exodus. No mode of transportation moved as fast as they.

And where were they all going?

North. Just north.

David glanced at his watch. Ten hours. Across the aisle, Friberg gazed out another window with Mark Ingersol. David caught Ingersol's attention and thumbed outside. “There's no way they're going to get away in time. You know that.”

The man's eyebrow lifted. “They're doing better than I imagined. If they had any brains, they'd just leave the cars and walk.”

“For the record, sir, I want to make it clear that I believe we're going about this wrong. We should be looking north as well.”

“You've said that. We don't have the time to check Miami and you want us to spread ourselves even thinner? You have a hunch. We have a threat on paper that puts a bomb in Miami. I'm not sure we have any choice.”

He had a point, of course. But David's hunch was making his skin crawl. The plane dipped a wing and began a quick descent to Miami International. They were the only plane on pattern and within ten minutes they were down.

The air seemed thicker than David remembered and he couldn't help but wonder if the detonation out to sea had affected the weather. They were ushered into the terminal where a solemn gray-haired Lieutenant John Bird met them with an outstretched hand.

“I hope you have some information for us,” Bird said, taking each hand quickly. “I've got a thousand men scattered over southern Florida and we don't even know what we're looking for. A picture or a description wouldn't hurt.” He spoke without smiling. By the rings under his eyes, he hadn't slept for a while, David thought.

“If we knew what you were looking for, you would know by now, wouldn't you?” Friberg's tone earned a hard stare from the National Guard officer.

“Tell me what you've got,” Friberg demanded.

Bird hesitated only a second before spitting out his report in staccato fashion. “We're sweeping every port south of the blast site in ten-man teams with Geiger counters. So far, nothing has turned up. We're manually picking through every storage bin waiting for customs inspection, but like I said, without a specific description the process is slow. We've isolated every shipment received in the last three days and are currently searching their deliveries, but again, we're shooting in the dark. If we at least had a size on this thing—”

“But we
don't
have a size on this thing. What about the DEA leads? Have you traced the suspected trafficking routes?”

“Not yet, sir. We—”

“Not yet? I thought the DEA gave that top priority. These terrorists are operating out of drug country, Lieutenant. Don't you think it would make sense for them to use trafficking routes?” The director's face flushed red. “Bring me the DEA intelligence.”

“Yes, sir.” Bird eyed Friberg for a moment.

“Now, Lieutenant.”

Bird turned and strode for the door.

“Excuse me, sir,” David interjected. “But have we established contact with Casius?”

Friberg faced him. “What would Casius have to do with this, Lunow? If we'd made contact with him, he'd be dead, wouldn't he?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Friberg's nostrils flared.

“But I was referring to his knowledge of the situation, not his elimination. You put the word out to him?”

“He's a rogue agent. Our intentions are to kill him, not court him. And we don't exactly have a direct line to the man's head.”

“He's been in contact with these terrorists, for crying out loud! He may have information you need,” David said. “And if you wanted to get word to him, I would think a few well-placed helicopters with loudspeakers might be a start. But you're not interested in bringing him in, are you?”

Friberg trembled when he spoke. “You are out of line, Lunow! But I don't have the time to address your obvious lack of understanding right now. We've got a deadline here.”

The director turned his back on David and strode for the window.

“Ingersol!” he snapped.

Ingersol flashed David an angry stare and followed the director over to the window. Bird burst through the doors, gripping the DEA report. He joined the men at the window.

David swallowed. “We're toast,” he mumbled. “We're toast and they know it.”

SHANNON CRAWLED from the Orinoco River, feeling a deep desperation he'd rarely felt. It was the same vacuum that had sucked at his chest eight years earlier. The emptiness he thought might precede suicide.

His back stung badly and he wondered if the skin was drawing infection. He was a good ten miles from where he'd left Tanya on the banks of the Caura River.

Shannon stood for a moment on the shore, his hands dripping limp at his sides. For the first time in eight years he had failed to kill a man he'd pursued. Abdullah had escaped.

He gripped his hands to fists, glanced up the mountain, and lumbered forward. He would finish this. It was all he knew, this drive to kill. And it wasn't just about Abdullah, was it? He was showing them all.

The feeling couldn't be too different from what a trapped animal felt, pounding relentlessly into a concrete wall, oblivious to the blood seeping from its head.

Shannon blinked the sweat from his eyes and crashed through the underbrush, not caring who heard him now. If this was his last mission, so be it. It would be a fitting end—to die having killed the one who had taken the life of his mother on the lawn.

Are you ready to die, Shannon?

Tanya.

Her face rose up in his mind, out of the black fog. A seventeen-year-old blonde, diving from the cliff into his arms. A twenty-five-year-old woman, running through the jungle at his heels. His vision blurred and he grunted.

You're a fool, Shannon.

He pulled up and gripped his head, suddenly terrified. For a few long breaths he shook on the path. What was he doing? What had he
done?

The black fog settled into his mind slowly.

A thought stuttered through his mind. An image of his blade crossing Abdullah's neck. He shook again, this time with a familiar eagerness.

Shannon dropped his arms and ran. He would kill Abdullah and then he would kill Jamal.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

TANYA WAS sleeping dreamlessly when the blow caught her midsection. She instinctively coiled up, coughing. A voice screamed above her.

“Get up!”

Another blow slammed into her back and she scrambled to her knees. Above her, a figure slowly shifted into focus, backlit by the afternoon sun. Her head spun, and she thought she was going to faint. But the feeling passed, and she blinked at the man.

A man with the white wedge through his hair still stood over her, grinning with twitching lips. Abdullah. She knew him immediately.

He held a silver pistol in his right hand. A small aluminum skiff tied to a muddy stump bobbed on the current behind him. The man's white shirt had been browned by river muck and his black shoes were caked with mud. He'd saved his pants by rolling them up above his socks to hairy, bony shins that looked as though they hadn't seen the sun in years. The angry scar on his cheek curled with his grin. He'd come down the river from the plantation, which meant Shannon had failed to find him.

“Well. What a surprise. It's the assassin's woman,” Abdullah said. His tongue seemed dark in his mouth when he spoke, like an eel hiding in its black cave. His wet lips quivered spastically.

“It appears that you'll die after all.” The Arab's eyes glistened black and bulging, and Tanya thought that he had lost himself. She stood slowly.

She saw Father Petrus then, kneeling in the mud by the skiff, blindfolded, hands tied behind his back.

“Father Petrus!” She instinctively moved toward him.

“Shut up!” Abdullah struck her shoulder, and she fell back to her seat.

She scrambled around. “What have you done to him?”

“It's okay, Tanya.” The priest's voice was hoarse.

Tanya? He knew her real name?

Abdullah smiled, amused. “You want your priest, don't you? Yes, of course, you are about to die and you want your priest.” He turned to the river. “Priest, come here.”

Petrus did not move.

“Come here!” Abdullah screamed. “Are you deaf?”

Father Petrus got his legs under him and staggered toward them. The Arab stepped out impatiently and shoved him the last few yards. Petrus collapsed beside Tanya.

She ripped his blindfold off and threw it to one side. Petrus blinked in the light, and she helped him to his seat.

Abdullah looked at them, an amused expression on his face, momentarily lost, it seemed. He lifted his black eyes and studied the tree line above the clearing. “Where is your man now? He's not here, is he? No. He couldn't have come this far so quickly. But he'll come. He'll come for his lover.”

Please, God . . .
Tanya started the prayer but didn't know where to go with it.

Abdullah rested his eyes on her again. He motioned to her with the pistol. “Do you know what I've done?”

His face held such a look of pure evil that Tanya instantly knew. The bomb. He had detonated the bomb in her vision. Fear squeezed at her heart.

“Yes?” A twisted grin lifted his left cheek, the one without a scar. Sweat snaked from his temples. “Do you know?”

“You're the devil,” she said.

His lips snapped shut. His eyes glared round. “Shut up!” Spittle flecked on his lower lip.

She looked at Father Petrus seated beside her. Their eyes met and his were bright. His face sagged and his clothes were torn but his eyes were bright. A smile tugged gently at his mouth. She blinked. A lump rose in her throat.

She looked up at Abdullah. “You're the hand of Satan.”

The Arab's gun hand began to tremble and she spoke again, gaining confidence now, “Yes, I do know what you've done. You've detonated a nuclear bomb.”